Reflections
by flitchoftherivers
Summary: Aragorn/Legolas. An exceedingly short, exceedingly sappy series of three first-person narratives from Aragorn, Legolas, and Thranduil, respectively. Roughly follows my other fic, occuring sometime afterward. Written both to waste time and to half-heart
1. Dawnlit Reflection

Dawnlit Reflection

            He's sleeping now.

From here I can just catch the tip of his ear before it dives into the sheet covers—he wouldn't believe me when I told him it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen.  I suppose when you've been alive as long as he has you have more of right to such statements than a mere mortal, but then I've seen some fair things in my time.  My time is his.

But his hair—now that transcends the ears.  This is the only time of day when you can catch it tousled…not messily so, just whisked across his face as if some divine wind blew it there and left it, a piece of breathing art.  The sun just coming through the palace windows lands in squares of nine on the bed and one of these, the topmost one, falls across the wayward strands of hair, igniting them.  Well, perhaps "igniting" isn't the right word.  He'd know, but even if I woke him he wouldn't answer, not for himself.  He's very gifted with words, you understand, but he wouldn't sort through poetical devices to describe his own hair.  Or even his cloak—I tried that once, subtly I thought, when attempting to compose a little ballad about him during the long winter months.  Once he wheedled out of me what it was I was doing, he just laughed.  He has a gorgeous laugh, like flutes.

There—oh, he rolled over.  So much for the patch of glowing blonde.  Oh, well.  I wonder if he's awake and can feel my eyes on him.  He's awfully alert, even for an elf.  I wonder if he can sense me sweep my gaze up and down the long creamy length of him in the half-light of dawn, greeting each smooth inch of skin as the familiar homeland it is.

No, I'm quite sure he's asleep.  If he could feel the approval of my eyes he could feel the approval of other senses, too, and if that were the case he wouldn't still be lounging in the bed—and I certainly wouldn't be tucked into a chair wearing only my cloak from Lothlorien.  Marvelous garment, it is, particularly when you want to leap from the shadows to surprise your yawning lover as he blinks the sleep from his eyes in a blanket of sunlight.  I do wish that sun would hurry up.  He looks so inviting just lying there, half in and half out of the tangle of sheets (sky blue to compliment his eyes; my doing), and I don't know how much longer I'll be able to sit like this making rational observations.

Even when you don't take all that in—the vale of tendon, the knoll of cheekbone, the curve of lip caught in a dream—even when you don't take that in (if it's possible to do so), I'm not sure I'll be able to keep on like this simply because of my position.  I'm stiff, my bones ache, and at my age the ability to "tuck" yourself into a chair is a very rare talent indeed, and meant to be used sparingly.  The sun is almost fully up now; its fingers are already catching the tops of the battlements and the tip of the Tower of Ecthelion.  He always, always rises with the sun.  Maybe if I just stretch my legs out, maybe he won't notice…maybe, just set them so gently on the mattress—

Oh.  Hello.  Pale fingers trailing over ankle…

So he was awake.


	2. Twilit Reflection

Twilit Reflection

            I exhausted him.  If only he knew how beautiful he is stretched out across the bed, one browned arm flung wide to the window as if to catch the last rays of the sun as they sink below the battlements!  I tell him and tell him, but I'm sure he doesn't believe me.  He will shrug and his lips will twitch into that quiet smile of his and I know what he's thinking.  He is brooding on the silver in his hair and the ache in his bones and, maybe, the seeming lack of the traits in me.  He thinks he's leaving me behind.

How wrong he is!  But I can't correct him, no, not until the signs are obvious.  The invisible ones, those that pick and pluck at my consciousness every hour of the day—those would harm more than help him.  He is so quick, to name himself the guilty party that he will disregard completely others' hands in the matter.  He fashions his own burdens.

And to allow him to do so here and now, of all times and places, would be a crime!  Look at the toughened sinews slack in sleep, the kiss of pale sheet over nipple, the glitter of noble beard in the last light of day!  Nobility, that's what that metallic color symbolizes—nobility, and the breadth, depth of the earth from whence it came.  Mayhap the dwarves have more of a right to such claims, but I let it stand.  If I am wind—and I'd wince had it not come from the mouth of  my beloved—if I am with then he is the earth over which the wind howls.  I know his every peak and pinnacle, dip and depression; the sandstone crevasse of skin and the pitch dark forests in between.  He is earth, but I do not shape him.  Some things were made best to begin with.

He stirs!  Only to shiver—but I wasn't thinking!  Winter is nipping at autumn's heels and I've flung the windows open, chilling him!  Careful, careful, quiet enough to keep even the Ranger of the North at rest.  Sleep, sleep, sleep with the sun…as its last rays set your chest alight with silver flame…

You're still shivering.  Perhaps, gently, if I lay like this, put my hand here, you'll be warmer.  Oh—no, I didn't mean to wake you.  Hush, sleep, I—ah.  Oh, you don't have to—ah, you needn't—oh.  _Oh._  Never…mind…

The wind runs over the earth with a wail and a roar, but the earth kneads the wind simply by existing.


	3. Moonlit Reflection

Moonlit Reflection

            There it is.

There is the cursed white city that stole my son from me—him and his graying Man!  I tell him to go to Rivendell and win the heart of the Evenstar, and what does he do?  Runs of with a herd of Men and half-pints—a dwarf, even!—and loses his immortality to the shaggiest of them all.  

Not that he would have had much of a chance with Undomiel.  If I'm to believe what they've been saying, she's as cross-eyed as my son—taking up residence with that Lady of Rohan everyone keeps talking about.  See how long the family line lasts, then, I tell you!  

But that's not my concern.  No—whether or not Elrond is writing in his bower in the Blessed Realm, I neither know nor care.  But my son—my _mortal_ son—he is my problem.  My one, my only son, and look what he's done!  Did he ask my consent?  Did he even tell me?  No, of course not, because he knew what I would say.  Foolery to throw away immortal life for the love of a ragamuffin of a Man!  Nonsense!  A waste of fine elf!

Wait until the moon is down.  Then we'll see who pulls the skin over whose eyes in this family.  The Prince of Mirkwood, forsaking life and title for _this!_  "The time of the elves is drawing to a close"…you think folk like my son are helping the situation?  No, he may be mortal, but I intend to set him to rights.  Men are weak; weak and trusting enough to miss a flash in the dark, a shadow behind the curtain.  And if my son catches it, so much the better.  I should hope that he has that much elf left in him, and I will use that to my advantage.  Consorting with the likes of…king or no, it's an outrage.  Just wait till the moon is down.

Look at this land!  Sparse plains and mountains with a token scattering of trees—not a great elm or oak in sight!  Nothing within fifty miles of here can compare to the glory of the Mirkwood, with its secret trails and hidden glens belonging to the ancients of the forest.  The palace hewn of rock, the river coursing silently through the trees, has he forgotten them?  What of the whisper of beech leaves in midsummer, the garland of stars hanging from maples on a winter's eve?  What has happened to my son that he forgets the very land the birthed him?

I'll tell you what happened to him.  It's that city, so white under the moon—that city and the cursed king who rules it.  Oh but wait, not even that!  I am told that the sniveling wretch doesn't even rule his own kingdom, that he lets the reins of power fall into the hands of a _woman!_  Two women, no less:  Undomiel and her wench.  Meanwhile the supposed "king" is out cavorting around with my son, _my son…_

Patience, patience.  If there is one thing we elves have learned from our dealings with men is that patience with them always pays off.  They spend their lives flitting from one frantic occupation from another, desperate to make a lasting image on a world they barely get a chance to know, while we persist for time eternal, waiting.

I can wait.  Wait till the moon is down.


End file.
